Claudia Salinas, a witness for Harvey Weinstein’s defense team, on Monday denied ever closing a door behind Lauren Young, who testified that she was trapped inside a bathroom with Weinstein and that he then groped her breast and masturbated.
Young testified that Salinas invited her to meet with Weinstein at a hotel in Beverly Hills to discuss a script that Young was working on at that time. Young said that Weinstein asked to move the meeting up to his hotel suite because he needed to get ready for an awards ceremony, and that she was eventually led into the bathroom of the suite and saw Salinas close the door behind her. Inside the bathroom, Young said Weinstein got naked, unzipped Young’s dress, groped her breast, and masturbated until he ejaculated onto a hotel towel on the floor.
On Monday afternoon, Salinas repeatedly denied going up into the hotel suite with Young and Weinstein or closing the door to the bathroom behind Young.
“If I had done that, I would remember that,” Salinas said. When shown pictures of the hotel suite where the alleged incident took place, Salinas also said she did not recognize the room.
During the prosecution’s cross-examination, Assistant District Attorney Meghan Hast pressed Salinas on previous statements she had given to the DA’s office about how the bathroom incident “could have happened,” even if she didn’t recall it.
“If I said that, it was suggesting that it could’ve happened, but that didn’t mean that I was there,” Salinas said.
Hast also asked Salinas about her own relationship with Weinstein.
“He was flirtatious with me,” Salinas said. “I told him that I wasn’t interested.”
Weinstein, who is on trial for five felony charges of predatory sexual assault and rape, has pleaded not guilty and denied all accusations of nonconsensual sex.